I will start by saying that I do hope Corey is fully recovered from his concussion, is overall at full strength, and finds happiness away from the game.

Hoops wise though watching him clank open shot after open shot at critical times was testing my sanity. Not to mention he couldn't stop a RISD art student from getting into the lane. Him playing anything resembling meaningful minutes moving forward would have been a bad omen.

Nah, I liked Corey. Liked his smooth offensive game and feisty defense. He's a loss. But in context of crowded minutes at the 1/2, he may have felt he was odd man out.

So it would seem from the other comment that the other three leaving the program are in fact from this year's team. I note the ProJo article mentions a number of players but does not discuss the three freshmen bigs - Charnov, Erebor and Howard. Let's hope it's not all of those guys. Then we're back to no depth in the front court.

There are a lot of things we can't quickly change - facilities, AI, finaid. So in my eyes this all comes down to recruiting.

It seems to me that, without making progress in areas you mention (facilities and financial aid in particular), recruiting success will be nearly impossible.

There appears to be a perception that all you need is a head coach who's a great salesman, and you'll be able to recruit. This is wrong. Recruiting is a team effort, and the HC is only one member of what's actually a pretty large team. In addition to the entire coaching staff, you need several members of the athletics department staff, the financial aid office, the admissions office and senior university administration all working together. Success requires an institutional commitment, not just a coach can sell shoes to snakes.

So, the question isn't whether Mike Martin can recruit, it's whether Brown University can recruit. Don't put it all on Martin.

By the same token, don't suggest MM is a bystander. To suggest he isn't the captain of the effort - through the staff that he chose and works for him, leveraging the relationship he builds and the influence he has on the AD or finaid - isn't accurate. Nobody is more accountable for the success in recruiting than the head coach. You change the coach, you get different players. That's the case here, even at Brown.

There is no way to absolve the head coach of the outcomes. And I guarantee you MM doesn't want to be.

The head coach is obviously not a bystander, but he's also clearly not fully in control. If the institution isn't prepared to make the necessary resources (admin personnel, travel budget, financial aid, admissions flexibility, etc.) available, no amount of brilliant work by the coaching staff is going to yield results.

I'm not sure I agree with you SM. I just look at Villanova, in which Jay Wright has a staff whose oldest guy was 34 (and just got the Quinnipiac job) and none of them have head coaching experience. Meanwhile, you find me another big time coach who doesn't have a top assistant with head coaching experience and big time recruiting experience.

Wright seems to do it with lesser resources and a far more experienced staff. While you may say that this is the Ivies, I would suggest that the need for a "team" is much greater at the higher level. Yet Wright gets it done in spectacular fashion---getting people to a school about the same size as Brown.

The head coach is obviously not a bystander, but he's also clearly not fully in control. If the institution isn't prepared to make the necessary resources (admin personnel, travel budget, financial aid, admissions flexibility, etc.) available, no amount of brilliant work by the coaching staff is going to yield results.

Sorry, but we have no idea what kind of resources Wright has available to him. Clearly, he's a great salesman for his program, but I'm sure the university gives him a substantial recruiting budget, as well as all the support staff he needs. It also strikes me as possible that recruiting might be a somewhat less resource intensive endeavor for a program like Villanova's, as there are two major factors they don't need to worry about that an Ivy coach does: academic admissibility and financial aid.

I'm not comparing Wright and Villanova with Brown. I'm comparing them to Kentucky, Duke and North Carolina, who have budgets 10X or more more than Villanova and who have assistants with 10 years or more of head coaching experience. The coach makes a tremendous difference in college ball at all levels. Sure, institutional support helps but there are coaches who take a level of institutional support with which other coaches cannot win (say, Steve Lappas at Villanova)and they win. It's more than being a mere salesman.

To kind of tie all of this together, I do think that at least some of the more negative Brown posters may underestimate the external limitations on Martin. However, that doesn't mean that a Wright (or perhaps more realistically the next Few, Stevens, or Smart) couldn't be much more successful. That transformative coach could be out there somewhere. The question then becomes whether you want to keep throwing out coaches in search of lightening in a bottle, which probably means you sacrifice continuity for finding that young game changer (who then leaves quickly). Personally, I'd stick with Martin, but as a Penn guy I'm biased.

Word is Newman didn't get into school .... interesting as he did a prep year...feel bad for the kid as it seems he really wanted to attend the university. Im all for kids having the reach a threshold to get into the school, but it pains me to think of all the good things Kuak 2.0 and Newman could have done in a Brown uniform. Just an elevation of size and athleticism that we need in the program

No, he doesn't. But his kids have to go to class and remain eligible, which his competition evades with their best players being one and done. He's competing with the big boys with far fewer resources and far more restrictions. So as SG puts it, he's a transformative coach at that level. Are there such coaches willing to coach at Brown? That is the question.

There was a time when Yale and Harvard felt like similar situations to Brown. Consistent also-rans that finished bottom half more than they finished top-half. They didn't have storied facilities that kids were dying to play in like Penn had, or impressive fan turnout like Penn and Princeton had. Their main asset was academic reputation, and that didn't translate into recruits or wins. It didn't change until they got game changing coaches, which over time led to better recruits and better programs.

Cornell turned that around too. Then Steve Donahue left and they lost the appeal.

In short, not too long ago, two of the top programs today were beset by the similar institutional disadvantages to what Brown faces. And they overcame that, and became choice places to play in the Ivy.

I think that in most cases it is about who the coach is. That's what gets you over the hump. And yes, humps exist. But they haven't only existed at Brown.

I think there was an institutional change when Amaker was hired. Frank Sullivan isn't Amaker, obviously. But I think he would love to have gotten the cooperation from admissions that Amaker has gotten.

I also think that HYP have a fin aid advantage that hurts the other teams.

That could well be the case, but mote that I think it is still pretty standard practice to reject players who commit elsewhere. So it could be that Newman didn't get in and that's why he won't be playing basketball at Brown, but it also could be that he told them he wouldn't play basketball at Brown, and therefore he didn't get in.

That said, just kind of reading the tea leaves of the sudden late announcement of Shaper a couple of days beforehand, it could be that they somehow needed to change the AI mix to fit everybody. Also possible that, to get back to my point about the institutional difference between Harvard and Brown right now, Brown admissions isn't being as accommodating of basketball as some of the other schools.

Newman aside, I'm told that, in football, Brown Admissions sometimes discourages the recruiting of candidates who are admitted to other Ivies. That it also happens in BB as well, would not surprise me.